The present invention relates generally to education, and more particularly to help a user pay attention in teaching the user through a computing device.
Both at home and in schools, the computer is gradually becoming a major medium for education. There are many different reasons for this trend. One is the tremendous reduction in the price of a computer, causing it to permeate into almost every household. Though the price of a computer has been dropping, its computation and memory capacity have increased many folds, leading to computer programs with significantly more intelligence and improved user-friendliness. Another reason is that a computer-aided-education system can be very personalized; it can be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of individual students. This is very hard to achieve in today's educational environment, in part due to the increase in the students-per-instructor ratio.
One weakness of a computer-aided-educational system is that it typically ignores a student's concentration level. In contrast, a good instructor teaches according to the student's attention span. She can sense whether or not the student is paying attention. Normally, she attributes her sensitivity to her “intuition,” based on years of her teaching experience. One “intuition” is that when the student's pupils start to dilate, the student has lost focus. Another “intuition” is that when the student frowns, he is concentrating. Such “intuition” is very useful in teaching. A good instructor constantly observes such concentration-sensitive behavior, and dynamically adjusts her teaching materials and style accordingly. If most of the students are looking elsewhere instead of at her for a certain period of time, the instructor might stop teaching and tell a joke. This helps the students re-focus back at the instructor. If a student is drooping, the instructor might directly ask her a question to “wake her up.” Such important “intuition” is missing in today's computer-aided-educational systems.
It should be apparent from the foregoing that there is a need for a computer-aided-educational system and method that consider the student's concentration level, while the student is working on the study-materials.